BACKWARD GLANCES - Robber wonders if anyone can take a joke

See what was happening in Redwood Falls 50, 25, and 10 years ago this week.

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By Joshua Dixon, Staff Writer

Redwood Falls Gazette

By Joshua Dixon, Staff Writer

Posted Nov. 22, 2012 at 12:01 AM

By Joshua Dixon, Staff Writer

Posted Nov. 22, 2012 at 12:01 AM

1962—50 years ago

• Beer flowed freely in Lucan when a Schell beer truck from New Ulm collided with a slow moving Chicago and North Western fright train. No one was injured in the crash.

• In a completely unrelated incident six miles north of North Redwood, a truck driver overturned his tanker truck full of oil when he reached for a bag of peanuts he dropped onto the cab floor.

The driver was shaken, but not stirred.

• A brand new 1963 demonstration model Pontiac, being delivered to the Scott-Preusse showroom for display, overturned into a ditch just north of North Redwood while trying to pass another vehicle.

• To keep Redwood County’s general election ballots safe until the results were officially canvassed, the ballots were stored in jail cell.

Only Sheriff George Matson had a key to the jail, while only County Auditor P.R. Byram had a key to that specific cell.

• Redwood Falls barber Fred Winters was found dead in his shop by his first customer to come into the barber shop that day.

Winters, who had suffered from a heart condition, was found lying on the floor with his bottle of heart medicine just beyond his grasp.

1987—25 years ago

• Over 200 area teachers, church leaders, and area government staff attended an in-service to learn about the AIDS virus.

• A three year old European fallow deer that escaped from the Ramsey Park zoo was captured and returned safely after two years of wandering through the area.

The deer managed to get through two winters and three hunting seasons unharmed before it was shot with a tranquilizer dart near the golf course.

• The Redwood Falls Hospital announced it would be going smoke-free starting Jan. 1, 1988.

• Otto Zick, the maintenance man at the Redwood Falls airport, demonstrated how he ducked under the moving propellers of ambulance helicopters when he refueled them.

“The planes get shut off when refueling, except ambulance helicopters. You fuel then on the run,” Zick said.

• Redwood Falls ranked 59th in the state in per capita retail sales, with $45.3 million spent in the town in 1986.

2002—10 years ago

• Sleepy Eye native Jimmy Rix, then living in Texas, wrote a science fiction novel (“37 Ivory Towers) set in the year 2019.

In one scene, the heroine visited her hometown of Redwood Falls, Minnesota.

• After city crews began dumping leaves on the Memorial Field lawn, area residents wondered if that was a new city dump site.

Nope, the crews dumped the leaves there to keep the ground from freezing where the new veterans memorial was going to be built.

Page 2 of 2 - • A 59-year old St. Cloud man remained in jail after walking into a Redwood Falls bank, and saying he was there to rob it. The man, who wore a red bandanna over his face and claimed to have a gun, eventually left empty-handed.

When law enforcement caught the man in a local restaurant, he said, “Can’t anybody take a joke?”

• Redwood County government launched its website to get its information out to the public.

• The city council set up a special commission to correct some 100+ year old boundary disputes.

It seems back in 1898 the railroads platted an imaginary 11th Street in the south side of town, and several houses were built in the area anticipating a street would eventually be build there.

When the city built the streets elsewhere, the original property lines were off by as much as 10 feet - an issue that still hadn’t been corrected 104 years later.